The openSUSE development team has announced that openSUSE 10.3 Release Candidate 1 is available for testing. "After quite a few rebuilds and testing, the openSUSE team is happy to announce that RC1 looks brilliant and is now available for download. We consider this release to be feature complete, stable, and suitable for testing from any user. For more information on the release schedule, take a look at the Roadmap."

Hmm I've always had alot of problems with kubuntu. Konqueror would crash regularly, adept would freak out if compiz was running and drop to a window instead of staying in the system tray, not to mention the horrible layout of it's interface. No idea how synaptic can be quite nice UI-wise and adept equally horrible on the other end of the spectrum.

One last minor thing that annoys me is how kubuntu removes the option for opening a terminal window attached to konqueror in a split view. I think it's normally in the window pull down menu? It use to do this at least, I haven't checked it out lately. Or maybe this is a suse feature, no idea, haven't messed with any other distro's besides suse or *buntu in awhile.

Kubuntu just always feels like the ghetto wasteland of *buntu to me, kde on suse feels very polished and has great admin tools. The only things I'd like to see in suse are features like ubuntu has for restricted hardware enabling with one click, and multimedia retrieval when you play a mp3 etc..

1-Click install seems to be a good idea and helps in these instances but you still need to know where to look to find this package to begin with. I just like the fact that it's built into the ubuntu menu system.

1-Click install seems to be a good idea and helps in these instances but you still need to know where to look to find this package to begin with. I just like the fact that it's built into the ubuntu menu system.

The 1-click install is available from the opensuse-community.org website, which will be a vast improvement over the process with previous versions.

Novell is, unfortunately in this case, a US-based organization and can't run the risk of making themselves a legal target by facilitating the circumvention of patented media restrictions, so it is not likely that they will ever be able to include a "click here for codecs" button. As long as they continue to look the other way while the community works at arm's length to facilitate this themselves (hence the creation of the opensuse-community.org site), then new users will not have to struggle to deal with this, despite the lack of a built-in option.

Yeah I know there is the package search engine, and the community site, and I've used both before, but they require a little knowledge/googling before hand. Ubuntu's solution does not.

Hmm I didn't really consider the fact about being US-based, however fedora (Redhat) is releasing a 'codec-buddy' which sounds very similar to ubuntu's solution, and fedora is sponsered by a US organization (Redhat) just as opensuse is sponsered by novell, so where does the difference lay?

The codec buddy from Fedora requires you to pay a fee to get legal, PROPRIETARY codecs, mmmmmmm'kay ?
Ubuntu solution is illegal in the USA and is based only on free software. (maybe it will change, time will tell)

openSUSE has a mixed view on it. It has a one click install that ease the pain of installing free replacement of proprietary codecs when you know the website that serves it but it stills delivers proprietary things on its non-oss repositories like Real Player.

1. Assume that the default application for MP3 playback is GStreamer-aware. A default installation of Fedora sets Rhythmbox as the default.
2. User double clicks on an MP3 file on the desktop.
3. Rhythmbox tries to play the file, but cannot since there is no MP3 codec on the machine.
4. Instead of a "cannot play this file" error message, Fedora 8 will show the user a nicer window, with a bit more information:
* One or two sentences explaining why there is no MP3 support.
* The option to "do nothing, never bother me again".
* The option to "learn more", and redirection to a website with a longer discussion of why Freedom isn't Free, etc.
* The option to go to a website where legal support for such codecs exists, if available
5.

The last option there will get the MP3 decoder plugin from Fluendo (where it is offered gratis), and then all GStreamer applications will be able to play MP3 files. The user has solved their problem in a legal way. See Installing Fluendo MP3 Plug-in

Correct me if I'm wrong, but by definition "gratis" means without charge.... so where does paying for a codec come into play?

If it's illegal for ubuntu to use their current method have any lawsuits been brought against them, or I'd even guess dell?

Codec Buddy points to the fluendo site for codecs, most of which are commercial (royalties paid when you purchase it) except for the mp3 license that they paid a fee to obtain for free distribution, as an admirable gift to the community and my hat is off to them for that. But then the fluendo codecs only work with gstreamer, which isn't the only media backend.

The patent holders of mp3 have already said that they won't pursue violations for individual users of their codec, but they reserve the right to go after unlicensed distributors. That patent is almost up anyways, but then when you consider that Microsoft was sued for $1B for violating the mp3 patent, despite the fact they paid a licensing fee, you can understand where US-based companies may be concerned about patents.

Dell was recently named in a lawsuit (among other manufacturers) for simply distributing PC's with Windows since they contain media player, which apparently violates a patent that some dork of a company received for playlists. Microsoft is also being sued, but these guys seem to be trying to get a piece of everyone.

So yes, Dell et al. are vulnerable to lawsuits as well based on the software they distribute. When it comes to the servers loaded with SLES or RHEL, they have indemnity clauses in place with Novell and RH, but I highly suspect they have no such indemnity agreements in place with Canonical, so Dell would be likely to run as fast as they can from Ubuntu *if* a patent threat ever came up.

At the end of the day, this legal mess really only exists in the US, but it impacts any company wanting to do commercial business in the US. Which is, pretty much, most of them. But while the "free" distros can generally get away with things, the commercially backed distros don't always have the same leeway.

As for Ubuntu, Canonical itself is based in the Isle of Man, so they barely have to pay taxes, let alone worry about US patent legislation.

I have just installed the OpenSuse 10.3-RC1 and found in Yast a package called "opensuse-codecs-installer":
"opensuse-codecs-installer - Cross platform codec installation for openSUSE
A cross platform component for multimedia frameworks to use to initiate package installation for missing codecs, specific to openSUSE. Supported by GStreamer and Xine."
So try it out.
Yast refers to the following URL: http://software.opensuse.org/codecs
It is so damned simple:
"To go through a simple wizard guiding you through the installation process of some additional multimedia codecs where necessary, simply click on one of the links below: (...)"
:-)

http://opensuse-community.org does have all the stuff, but MP3 support for banshee and amarok will be available straight away for the final release (via a "No mp3 support detected. Would you like to install it now?"

...if this one will boot on my backup system. It has a K62+/550 in it Most recent distros will not boot on it. When the kernel on the install cd or dvd starts up, the machine instantly reboots, no error message or anything, it's just as if somebody pressed the reset button.

I have had that problem in the past, when I tried to boot a distro that I found out was i686 optimized, and this is just like that.

I tried to install x86_64 10.3 RC using 1cd KDE on amd opteron system. It had lot of issues. If online repositories are enabled, installer gives conflict message telling both i386 and x86_64 are selected. Also I don't understand why installer wants to download both i386 and x86_64 pattern.gz files. In 10.2, it was worse: it downloaded all i386, x86_64 and ppc pattern files during network installation for an i386 machine. Too many conflicts to resolve, so I disabled online repositories and went ahead and installed. X is broken and I got command line asking for login. When I enter root, it says login incorrect. When I press some arbitrary string, it asks for passwd, and then gives the same message. Also while booting I see lot of error messages like internet devices not configured....... I guess, the installer was not finished before automatic reboot. Post-install configuration options were not displayed before the initial reboot. But before reboot, all the packages were installed.

I'm currently installing this beast. Tho I can't comment on the installed system yet, I can confirm that the installer didn't improve at all.

These guys seriously need to take a look at Fedora/Redhat's Anaconda and at Ubuntu's installer. Honestly, I think Slackware has a better installer than OpenSUSE/SUSE. I doubt they could have done worst...

1- It doesn't seem to cache settings at all. When you move from a section to another (like going back), it always stalls for a few seconds. Really annoying.
2- It's way too complicated for what it does.
3- If you make a mistake when doing post-installation configuration, you're screwed. It's really hard to go back and fix something. You end up with a half-configured system. You need to reinstall the whole thing.
4- It's buggy. For example, I download the KDE install CD and the non-free AddOn CD. Somewhere in the installer, it asked me to put the AddOn CD in (prior installation) . Of course, when it was ready to copy the files on my hardrive (the installation procedure), it asked me for the nstall CD. Well not really, it asked me for "CD1". So I put the install CD in. Unfortunately, it kept asking me for "CD1". Oh my god...

I don't think installation is over complex. I find most of the options & choices given during installation very useful.It allows me to install to XFS,ReiserFS,JFS...I can go on.
And I also agree somewhat with claims that in 10.3 installation speed improved. The files are copied very fast, but the dependency resolving is still slow. I think, Suse package management and slow are synonymous. Anyhow I got used to that. But the issue is when trying to install it for people new to Suse. They are immediately put-off with the delay in installing a package. Click on software management icon in Yast and it takes ages... Hope their claims for 10.3 are true.
Also from my past experience, installing Suse from CDs means asking for trouble. I prefer installing it from DVD.

That's for commercial distribution. MPEG licenses are free for non-commerial use. OpenSUSE (as well es Fedora) is a non-commercial project. You only had to buy a MPEG license if you use OpenSuse/Fedora/... as broadcasting station for a commercial web radio, sell OpenSUSE/Fedora/... boxes, or something like that.

And while we're on this subject, could somebody please explain to me what the deal is with w32codecs? Where do they come from? Are they just the codecs from Windows XP that somebody copied to a server a started re-distributing and re-packaging? Or or they reverse-engineered by open source hackers?

It's the codecs directly from Windows. Don't use them. They are a leftover when there was no native way to play WMA/WMV, QuickTime, and RealMedia files, but they are no longer needed. Every ffmpeg-based player (VLC, Xine, MPlayer,...) can play all non-DRM WindowsMedia and QuickTime files. RealPlayer/HelixPlayer is available as native Linux version.

It's the codecs directly from Windows. Don't use them. They are a leftover when there was no native way to play WMA/WMV, QuickTime, and RealMedia files, but they are no longer needed. Every ffmpeg-based player (VLC, Xine, MPlayer,...) can play all non-DRM WindowsMedia and QuickTime files. RealPlayer/HelixPlayer is available as native Linux version.

Well, that's news to me. I didn't know the OSS media players had native support for WindowsMedia and QuickTime files. Thanks for the clear answer! +1

I like the slab menu and single-bar interface a lot. I don't think the dual bars in Ubuntu and stock gnome improve usability at all, and they waste screen real estate. And I don't like the triple menu (programs-places-system) either, for exactly the same reasons.

I am a (very happy) Ubuntu user that got rid of the bottom bar, who themed Gnome green, and who would like to condense the three menus into one (must have a latent Suse user inside). Is there a way to install Suse's slab menu in Ubuntu? Suse is very nice, really, but I don't want to switch.

...here on and an aging home-brew AMD AthlonXP 3000+ Barton and Soyo Dragon Ultra mobo. It's snappy and free of any immediate "show stoppers". The final release should be the best since the 9.x series.

I haven't checked (I'm a KDE user) but can't you switch the gnome menu to the "normal" one easily like you can in the KDE one if you don't like the menu? Isn't this better where they give you a choice? I don't see is as a mess-up at all...

I did not find an option to switch the menu style, but maybe I was just blind. I tried their GNOME a bit, but I didn't like their modifications at all and then I removed GNOME and keep KDE for now. I'll try it again when the final release ships.

Nice feature to easy add community repos via YAST
This way adding packman and or videolan is piece a cake.Thumbs up for that one. If only opensuse would have more high available less retarded mirrors worldwide and suse would be back on track.